


Mirror Image

by whoneedsapublisher



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Gen, Post-Rebellion Story, Sorta HomuSaya-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 14:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18262799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoneedsapublisher/pseuds/whoneedsapublisher
Summary: Sayaka looks into the mirror, but what stares back isn’t quite right.





	Mirror Image

**Author's Note:**

> The penultimate fic in celebration of the Studio Coattails Patreon launching! Join us on the discord and say hi!

Sayaka stared at herself in the mirror.

She didn’t look any different than she remembered from yesterday. Or from the day before that. But she looked different than she did a few weeks ago.

She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Frustratingly, even the date of the change was starting to slip away from her. She could remember roughly how long ago it was, but the exact date wouldn’t stick in her head. Was it a Monday? A Tuesday? It wasn’t a Sunday- they’d had school. She remembered that much.

She was sure she’d known before. It felt silly to say. Of course she’d known before. It was something that had _happened to her_. Obviously she’d have known when it happened. And now she couldn’t remember. That was how forgetting _worked_.

But it felt wrong. She hadn’t forgotten what happened. It wasn’t something that she hadn’t thought about, and so it had slipped her mind. She was trying to hold on to it, but it was draining away. No matter how vivid the memory, the details were leaking out of her head. It was unnatural.

She stared at herself again, and tried to look past her. There was _something_ there, she knew it. She was Sayaka Miki, a normal middle school girl. But she was something _else_. There was something else there, but she couldn’t reach it, couldn’t touch it, couldn’t put it into words.

She had been a magical girl. She could grasp that, but she couldn’t make it _real_. She couldn’t think what that meant. What it _had_ meant. All she had was the words, and flashes of images, and she clung to them as hard as she could. She stared into the mirror and tried to project those images on herself. She’d had a cape. A collar. A blue top. As she stared, so hard that her eyes watered, in her blurry reflection it started to appear. She leaned closer, excitedly, blinking to clear her vision. In the mirror, the magical girl her stared back at her. She glanced down, excited, only to find that she was still in her school uniform. Wait, and her hair wasn’t that long. She reached up and felt the air, and in the mirror, her fingers rubbed hair that hung down too far.

She backed away from the mirror, and her reflection smiled.

“You’re trying to remember a lot of useless things, Miki Sayaka,” it said, in her voice.

Sayaka backed up more.

“Who are you?” she asked warily. She reached down to her side, but nothing sprung into her hand. Why had she expected anything to?

“I’m Miki Sayaka, of course,” her reflection said, leaning forward and emerging from the mirroring, stepping down over the sink to stand in front of her. Sayaka took another step back.“Don’t you recognise me? You see me in the mirror every day, don’t you?”

“You aren’t me,” Sayaka said nervously.

“Who else would I be?” Her reflection asked, tilting its head like it didn’t understand.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but-”

“You’re losing your mind,” her reflection said.

Sayaka froze.

“Do sane people’s reflections talk to them?” Her reflection asked, giggling. “It’s stress, I think. You’re so caught up in this idea that you’re forgetting things that you aren’t sleeping right, and now you’re hallucinating.”

Sayaka didn’t say anything. It… sounded plausible. How else would she be talking to her reflection?

“Just forget the things you don’t need to remember,” her reflection said, soothingly. It reached out its hand and Sayaka stumbled back, falling against the wall and sliding to the ground. Her reflection followed, kneeling down and leaning close to her. “You feel like you’re missing something, right?” It smiled and reached out its hand again, and placed it against Sayaka’s stomach, splaying its fingers. “Like there’s something that should be here, that isn’t anymore.”

“How do you know that?” Sayaka whispered.

“Because I did too,“ it said. “When I was stuck clinging to the past, inventing stories to explain something as simple as “I forgot.” But then I grew up, and realized there wasn’t anything to worry about it.”

Sayaka looked up at the reflection, at its calm, almost smug smile.

“Just let it go.”

“No,” Sayaka said firmly, clenching her fists. She pushed the reflection, and it stumbled back, falling and catching itself on its arms as Sayaka stood. “I won’t! I need to remember. I have to. It’s important!”

Her reflection frowned.

“You really are an annoyance, Miki Sayaka,” it said. At the start of the sentence, it was her, but it shifted as it spoke, starting to overlay itself with another voice. “All you have to do is just _forget_. To do nothing. And you can live happily ever after.”

Her reflection stood and dusted itself off. “Fine,” it said. “Struggle, then. You’re hurting only yourself.”

And then it was gone. There was no sudden flash, no disintegration. It was merely there one second, and then gone the next.

Sayaka stood for a moment, making sure, and then sighed.

She’d recognised the second voice as it spoke. It was a voice she could never forget, even as her memory broke apart and scattered.

“I will never forget this fact,” she said quietly. “Akemi Homura is a devil.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired heavily by https://twitter.com/yutyanTogarashi/status/1105719851845246976


End file.
